Sunday, November 29, 2015

The world is being overwhelmed by Syrian refugees. And it's easy to lose sight of what's really happening in the Middle East. Rouba Al-Fattal writes:

Most world leaders and analysts have argued that a common Western
strategy is needed to end the crisis. In the quest for that common
strategy, Western policy-makers deliberated for months and came up with a
beautiful road map for Syria. Russia came up with a road map of its
own. The gist of both proposals is to seize fire, come together at the
negotiation table, set up a committee to draft a new constitution,
reform some political and economic elements, run a referendum, call for
presidential and parliamentary elections and — hopefully — live happily
ever after.

It’s such a nice fantasy — but it’s a laughable effort on both sides.
How often can we forget our history? Did the road map for the
Israeli-Palestinian peace-process lead to a two-state-solution? Did the
road map for postwar Iraq lead to peace and stability? Why should this
experiment be any different? How many road maps can we draw for people
who don’t want to go anywhere? Let’s get real — unless this plan belongs
to the people directly affected by the war, it’s not worth the paper it
is printed on.

We're in a new world, Al Fattal writes, where old alliances have dissolved and new ones are being forged:

From a European perspective, Russia can provide the needed stability
in Syria — which is why French President François Hollande, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin have
recently been seen cozying up to each other. We shouldn’t be surprised
to see the European leaders softening their stance on Russia and giving
some concessions on Ukraine in exchange for a deal on Syria.

The U.S., fearing a Russian beachhead in Syria that could translate
into a stronger presence in the Middle East and new alliances with
Europe, had no choice but to intensify its military efforts by sending “boots on the ground” to fight ISIS in Syria — something President Barack Obama had vowed not to do.

But that’s not the only strategic shift the U.S. has attempted.
Despite the outcry from traditional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia,
the U.S. recently reached a nuclear deal with Iran. This landmark
agreement turns the tables on the existing actors and gives a seat to a
new player. The wisdom here is that the United States gains a new ally
which should help in maintaining a balance of power against Russian
dominance in the Middle East. This new U.S. strategy, which reads like a
page from a beginner’s primer on international relations, only helps to
widen the rift between the U.S. and Western Europe.

Stability will only be restored to the Middle East after these strategic shifts have been accomplished. Until then, many will die and many will flee. And those numbers will grow the longer the players seek military advantage.

It's a new world -- but not a brave new world.

We'll be away for the next couple of days. But I should be back on Tuesday or Wednesday.

People do crazy things when they get scared. History provides us with plenty of examples:

Due to the frenzy aroused in the indoctrinated, many innocent and
law-abiding Canadian and American citizens of German and Japanese
descent were unjustly persecuted; their properties were confiscated,
they were gathered into internment camps and their basic human rights
were limited and abused.

Many injustices have been, and continue to be, perpetrated against
our First Nations people, who were subjected to ethnic cleansing through
residential schools, forced to convert to Christianity and denied the
basic rights of citizenship until 1960. Their ancestral lands were
confiscated, their lives treated with disregard.

Looking back, we are ashamed at what others have done in our names. But, when we look forward, we tend to forget the past:

The demonization of peoples and religions is an insidious process that
infects entire cultures. Shakespeare vilified European Jews when he
wrote The Merchant of Venice, as Charles Dickens did when he made his child-slaver Fagin a Jew in Oliver Twist.
For centuries, Jews were portrayed in Western media as sly, deceitful,
evil and merciless — a portrayal that allowed the ‘civilized’ world to
stand by in silence — and in some cases even rejoice — as the Nazis
worked to annihilate European Jewry.

The enemy is the Islamic State. It is not Islam. If we fail to see that distinction, we will end up in a very dark place.

Friday, November 27, 2015

Stephen Harper used to talk about the virtue of individual responsibility. But, when it came to defending an individual's civil liberties, all of that rhetoric went up in smoke. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson believes -- as Harper did -- that civil liberties get in the way of good police work. Michael Harris writes:

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson wants warrantless access to online subscriber information.
That, in itself, is not remarkable. Police always want fewer obstacles
between their work and the people they pursue — more John Wayne, less
Perry Mason. It’s the old argument: It’s plenty hard enough to catch the
bad guys, we’re told, without bureaucrats putting roadblocks in the way
of the good guys.

It wouldn’t surprise me to find small graven images of Stephen Harper
and Vic Toews on Commissioner Paulson’s desk, given how much he sounds
like them. Harper and Toews both saw the world the way Paulson does, in
binary black and white: Give the police the power they ask for and
forget about the implications for civil liberties.

Harper simply didn’t give a hoot about privacy issues from the point
of view of the individual. This is the man who gave us Bill C-51, after
all. Harper’s approach to privacy law always came down to reduced
protection for individuals online and far more power for police and
other security services. Bill C-13 (the so called ‘cyberbullying’ law) and Bill S-4 (the Digital Privacy Act) were all about invasion of privacy without consequences for the invaders.

To Harper and Paulson it doesn't matter that the Supreme Court upheld the right of internet privacy in R v Spencer. The police, the court ruled, need a warrant to search internet subscriber information:

And it wasn’t just a matter of names and addresses, as the old
Harperites and the police always insisted in their zeal to pursue a bad
idea. It was high-tech snooping without due process or independent
oversight. The high court saw far greater values to protect than the
right of police to snoop.

But, unlike Harper, Paulson hasn't gone away. He represents another challenge which the Trudeau government faces.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Canadians across the country are getting ready to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees. In the small community in which my wife and I live, a family of 11 arrived two months ago. But before we begin congratulating ourselves too heartily, Jeff Sallot writes, we should put that number -- 25,000 -- in perspective:

While 25,000 might seem like a big number, it’s still only 10 per
cent of the total number of immigrants to Canada in an average year.

On the other hand, 25,000 is two-and-a-half times the number of Syrian refugees the United States plans to admit next year. Now that is shocking.

And, given the number of people who have fled Syria, that number is a mere drop in the bucket:

The UN has registered more than 4 million refugees who have fled
Syria for safety. There are at least 1 million more who have not been
registered. Inside Syria itself, about 7 million have been displaced by
the civil war. Half of Syria’s prewar population has been forced to
move.

These are the fortunate few. An estimated 250,000 have been killed in
the conflict. For every one refugee who arrives in Canada, ten have
already perished.

These three frontline countries rarely offer refugees resettlement,
permanent residency or a path to citizenship. The Syrians live in
shantytowns on the fringes of cities or in camps, some for more than two
years now.

The frontline governments hope a political settlement can be reached
in Syria so that the refugees can go home — the sooner the better. Many
displaced Syrians reckon they have nothing to go back to. They would
rather take their chances on the seas, or wait patiently for a country
like Canada to accept them as permanent residents.

There is much more which needs to be done. And now that Vladamir Putin has installed anti-aircraft missiles which can shoot down coalition bombers, the situation could get much worse.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Like Junior, Red Skelton's mean little kid, Stephen Harper's avowed purpose in life has been to throw a wrench into the workings of government. He remained true to form -- even as he was leaving -- making 49 re-appointments and future appointments, whose purpose was to hamstring the incoming government. Alan Freeman writes:

The 49 appointments, including renewals and new appointments, have
effectively blocked the newly-elected government from determining the
future course of key agencies like the National Energy Board. In one
remarkable case of chutzpah, the government renewed in advance the term
of Canada Post’s CEO, Deepak Chopra, until 2021 — even though Chopra was
the architect of the Crown corporation’s decision to kill door-to-door
mail delivery, a policy opposed by both the Liberals and the NDP. (In
this case, the Liberals may be able to undo the appointment because it
was made “at pleasure”. Others won’t be so easy.)

Several of the future appointments were made just before the government's mandate ended:

What’s particularly curious about the future appointments is that
several of them came down just days before Harper called the federal
election in early August, at which point the so-called “caretaker
convention” came into effect. That convention calls on the outgoing
government to show restraint in its exercise of power during an election
campaign, and to not do anything controversial. Knowing that the
convention was about to come into effect, the government rushed ahead
regardless with its future appointments — surely knowing that it could
do it with a wink and a nod from its top bureaucrats.

Harper showed no respect whatever for parliamentary conventions. But he couldn't have accomplished what he did without the clear collaboration of senior public servants:

It’s clear that many deputy ministers, each holding their jobs at the
pleasure of the PM and reporting to a Privy Council clerk equally
beholden to Harper, have spent a decade conveniently ignoring their duty
to serve the government and people of Canada. Many have known no other
government and may now suddenly find themselves a loss when actually
asked for real advice, let alone being forced to speak “truth to power”.

Harper's parting appointments are a reminder of how thoroughly he corrupted the civil service.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Just as they did before the American invasion of Iraq, most of our media -- particularly television -- are once again fanning the flames of fear. Andrew Mitrovica writes:

In times of free-floating anxiety like these, the corporate media does
not act as a brake on the state; quite the opposite. Rather than
challenge the extraordinary and expanding security powers of
Western states, corporate media outlets routinely urge them to exercise
those powers more pervasively and ruthlessly. Rather than the question
the rush to declare “war” — especially when the target is a non-state
actor which has proved itself stubbornly resistant to the traditional
tactics of war — they join the chorus calling for more airstrikes, more
ground troops, more action.

Worst of all, the corporate media will never acknowledge — from one
episode of panic to the next — that it ever made a mistake, ever took
things on faith that it should have verified, ever owed it to the people
making life-and-death decisions to shoulder some of the burden of the
terrible consequences of errors.

And it's not Fox News or the now defunct Sun News that are beating the drums of war:

And I’m not just talking about rancid right-wing radio and Fox TV
commentators. I’m talking about ‘mainstream’ journalism as well. I’m
talking about the talking heads who dutifully trot out the usual
‘experts’ — superannuated white, male members of the national-security
industrial complex now working as consultants — as they point fingers at
everyone but themselves and the state institutions they once served.

These suits are given free rein to say whatever they want, confident
that the reporter doing the questioning will nod solemnly and never
seriously challenge a word. So they’ll blame the latest ISIS atrocity on
American whistleblower Edward Snowden — calling him a traitor, claiming he has “blood on his hands.”
These pastured espiocrats will claim that the only way to combat
terrorism is to grant to already vastly powerful, secret and
unaccountable government agencies even more authority, money and staff.
They’ll rush to accuse Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama of weakness, to
condemn them for failing to jump into the Syrian quagmire with both
feet.

When "experts" start beating their war drums, it's wise to remember that empty barrels make the most noise.

Monday, November 23, 2015

If you really want to know what the Harper years were all about, Andrew Potter writes, you have to go back to the letter which Harper and Tom Flanagan sent to Ralph Klein in the aftermath of the 2000 election:

Addressed to Alberta premier Ralph Klein and signed by six people
(including Harper and his adviser at the time, Tom Flanagan), it was a
plea for Alberta to take charge of its own future. The goal was for
Alberta to carve out a place for itself in Confederation, using its
existing constitutional powers, that would insulate the province from an
“increasingly hostile government in Ottawa.” The letter’s proposals
included creating a provincial pension plan (like the QPP); a provincial
police force (like the SQ or OPP); collecting its own provincial income
tax (as Quebec does); forcing Senate reform back on to the national
agenda; and taking over complete provincial responsibility for health
care.

Apart from this list, the letter demanded that Klein do whatever he
could to reduce the transfer system that saw Alberta send $8 billion a
year to other parts of the country. In its concluding paragraph, the
letter says, “It is imperative to take the initiative, to build
firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and
hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial
jurisdiction.”

When Klein refused to take their advice, Harper decided to go to Ottawa and build the firewall from there:

Once you realize that Harper’s agenda was to build a firewall around
Alberta from Ottawa, a lot of what he did while in power starts to make
more sense. More specifically, a lot of what seemed like high-level
ideology is revealed as simple tactics. A case in point is climate
change. It is one thing to insist (as Harper rightly did) that Canada
should not go it alone on emissions reduction. It is something else
entirely to indulge in barely concealed denialism. But
once you realize that any comprehensive deal on emissions that would
actually do anything worthwhile would involve leaving a lot of oil in
the ground in Alberta, forever, then denialism becomes more
comprehensible.

To protect Alberta, Harper had to shut down three sources which were essential to the proper functioning of the federation:

Data: It wasn’t privacy, as Tony Clement said, or
freedom, as Max Bernier argued, that was the real rationale for killing
the mandatory long-form census. It was to throw a whole lot of noise
into the demographic signal that the census had been giving for decades.
That is also why Statistics Canada as a whole was gutted over the
course of the Harper years. Without accurate data, social planners are
flying blind.

Expertise: No government in living memory has been
as hostile to experts and to evidence as the Harper government. But as
Laval economist Stephen Gordon recently argued,
it wasn’t all forms of expertise and evidence that gave the Tories
hives – plenty of their economic initiatives were rooted in the best
available evidence. What the Tories were allergic to was expertise that
steered the evidence in directions they didn’t want to go – “committing
sociology,” in Harper’s wonderful turn of phrase. That is why scientists
were muzzled, policy shops were shuttered and bureaucrats were ignored.

Money: Here is the meat in the sandwich. When it
comes to social planning, the ultimate source of Ottawa’s power is the
spending power. And this is where Harper had his greatest success. By
the end of his tenure as prime minister, Ottawa’s spending, as a share
of GDP, had fallen to levels not seen since the middle of the 20th
century. And the spending that does remain is overwhelmingly devoted to
either just keeping the lights on or takes the form of transfers to the
provinces and individuals.
Harper’s policy genius here was the two-point cut in the GST, which
currently costs the federal treasury about $12 billion a year. Harper’s
political genius was the creation of an all-party and pan-Canadian
consensus around the virtues of a balanced budget at that historically
low level of federal spending.

No data, no experts and no money. Starve the beast, but make it blind
and deaf at the same time. This is Harper’s “Ottawa Firewall” in a
nutshell.

Justin Trudeau has moved immediately to restore data and expertise to government. Finding the money to make government function will be difficult, because neo-liberalism isn't dead. But it's beginning to look like Rachel Notley -- who introduced her proposals to deal with climate change over the weekend -- is very much in favour of tearing down the firewall.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

On Friday, Carol Goar took stock of the Harper years. Of Mr. Harper, she wrote:

The former prime minister was neither an ogre nor a brilliant manager.
He was an introverted politician who relied on fear to maintain control.
Over time, he alienated all but his party’s core supporters.

She then turned her attention to the incoming government:

As the Liberals begin their mandate, they need
to be conscious of their blind spots and Achilles heels. They are a
largely eastern, lawyer-loaded party that closely resembles the
political elite of the past. They campaigned skilfully but they haven’t
mastered the levers of power.

They must guard against any sign of entitlement. That means filtering
out the adulation of their acolytes and refusing to demonize their
opponents. It also means reaching out to the people who didn’t vote for
them. Trudeau promised on election night
to be a prime minister “who never seeks to divide Canadians, but takes
every single opportunity to bring us together.” Every new leader makes
some version of that pledge. Few stick to it.

The Canada and the world that Justin Trudeau has inherited is full of challenges:

The fledgling prime minister had a challenging first month: a
worse-than-expected fiscal update, a horrific terrorist onslaught in
Paris, a tense G20 meeting in Turkey and a jittery APEC summit in the
Philippines. He stuck to his election commitments, ignored the
second-guessers shouting from the sidelines and sidestepped the obvious
pitfalls. It was hard work.

Having acknowledged all that, Goar's final sentence bears repeating:

The time for celebrations and score settling, winning sides and losing sides has passed. The nation voted to turn the page.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Some folks are beginning to look through the embers to explain why the official opposition is now the third party. Geoffrey Rafe Hall writes:

Many observers, picking through the post-mortem of the NDP campaign,
have laid most of the blame on the niqab debate and the eruption of
identity politics, on Tom Mulcair’s flat performance in the first
leaders’ debate, and on Justin Trudeau’s substantial personal appeal.
All of these factors contributed to the result, of course — but not
one of them was solely capable of toppling what should have been a
well-run, sturdy election machine.

It may not seem obvious now, but the seeds of the NDP’s defeat in
October were sown years earlier — before Jack Layton’s death and the
breakthrough of 2011. Both were momentous events that had negative and
long-lasting repercussions. Ultimately, the gains in the 2011 election
fostered a climate of arrogance and complacency within the NDP’s senior
ranks and shifted the focus away from building a robust election machine
to operating the levers of power. Jack’s tragic death, which triggered a
genuine and heartfelt outpouring of grief from Canadians everywhere,
virtually guaranteed that the party would not conduct a critical
analysis of events.

Layton's triumph was also the party's downfall. Like Stephen Harper, Layton insisted on message discipline:

Career advancement was halted for anyone who failed to adhere rigidly to
dogma prescribed in many cases by senior political staff — not the
party leader. Greater emphasis was placed on centralized messaging and
communications at the expense of organization, technical innovation,
voter and volunteer identification and recruitment. In short, the NDP’s
organizational strength was allowed to atrophy.

But, ironically, even though the party movers and shakers insisted on message discipline, the message wasn't clear:

From the get-go, the NDP campaign lacked a clear direction and message.
Why did they want to win government? Was it to replace Harper? Usher in
change? Provide economic stability? The party failed to answer these
questions for voters, or to offer them any inspirational arguments for a
NDP government.

The party seemed to have forgotten who they were -- and lots of traditional Dippers voted for Trudeau -- a message that Justin should heed.

Friday, November 20, 2015

What happened in Paris a week ago was horrific. It can't be justified and it must be dealt with. But, for the last fifteen years, our response to what has been happening in the Middle East has been wrong headed. Since George W. Bush invaded Iraq, western policy has been all about eradication. Michael Harris writes:

But the more relevant question is whether a strategy of “eradication”
works. Fourteen years of boots on the ground in Afghanistan should have
shown the United States that it doesn’t. Two superpowers — the USSR,
then the U.S. — tried the military option for 24 years; Afghanistan
remains an unreconstructed narco-state with the Taliban back in business
and Kabul as corrupt as ever.

Boots on the ground accomplished even less in Iraq. Revisit in your
memory President George Bush strutting across the flight deck of the USS
Abraham Lincoln in September 2003 beneath a banner declaring “Mission
Accomplished.” It was War on Terror rhetoric at its most perverse.
Thirteen years on, that “war on a noun” is still an utter failure.

Shock and Awe may assuage a need for revenge. But it doesn't solve the problem. It only makes things worse -- because it obliterates perspective:

You stand a better chance of being struck by lightning than of dying at
the hands of a terrorist — but most governments see a hidden benefit in
exaggerating the threat. After every attack attributed to terrorists,
governments take another step towards the complete surveillance state.
France is no exception. In the wake of the Paris attacks, French
President François Hollande has asked to change the Constitution of the Fifth Republic.

What's even more worse, is that it gives rise to the Surveillance State:

The journey towards global surveillance rides the bullet train of fear
and prejudice. The more speed it picks up, the further democracy recedes
in the rear-view mirror. The National Security Agency spied on all
American citizens with its collection of so-called ‘metadata’ —
something Americans would still know nothing about were it not for a
fellow named Edward Snowden, now a fugitive in exile for alerting his
countrymen to the 21st century version of Watergate.

So what should be done?

The most sensible way to deal with terrorists is to stop characterizing
them as fanatics or mentally unstable. As former CIA officer Philip
Giraldi says, all terrorists are members of political movements. They
have grievances and goals which need to be understood rather than
caricatured. Otherwise, we have no way to intervene against them other
than the sharp edge of the sword — always an excellent recruitment tool
for outfits like ISIS.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

A photo of Stephen Harper, emblazoned with the caption “Miss Me Yet?”, has popped up on the blogs and Facebook posts of some core Conservatives. A new website, strongandfree.org, has declared that Justin Trudeau “is already letting Canada down” and is vowing to “bring conservatism back to Ottawa.”

That's because the mandate letters Trudeau sent to each of his ministers make clear that the Liberals' first order of business is to undo much of what Stephen Harper did:

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould appears to have the largest list
of Conservative measures to unravel; she’s already announced the move to
abandon a court challenge of niqabs at citizenship ceremonies and has
been tasked with a wide-ranging review of the past decade’s changes to
the criminal justice system. She has also been instructed to restore the
old Court Challenges Program
and help other ministers repeal bits of the controversial C-51 security
law and C-42, the so-called “Common Sense Firearms Act,” which critics
said watered down gun control laws in Canada.

Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly will be reversing funding cuts to the
CBC. Democratic Reform Minister Maryam Monsef will be taking a hatchet
to many provisions in the Fair Elections Act. Finance Minister Bill
Morneau will be scrapping income-splitting for families and other
“unfairly targeted tax breaks.”

When Citizenship and Immigration Minister John McCallum is done with the
task of getting 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by year’s end, he also
has to repeal provisions in the Citizenship Act that give the
government the right to strip citizenship from dual nationals, and also
eliminate a $1,000 fee imposed on those who hire foreign caregivers.

Then there are all the things that the Liberals promised to do -- like spending on infrastructure.

Stephen Harper won't recognize Canada when the Liberals get through with it.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Writing in yesterday's Globe and Mail, Bob Rae repeated some advice he once received from a good friend: It’s hard to be smart and angry at the same time. Justin Trudeau needs to take that advice to heart as he wrestles with the problem of ISIS. Rae writes:

More than a decade ago, September 11
generated an angry response from the United States. The assumption was
that eliminating the Taliban, which had without question aided and
abetted al-Qaeda, would be a quick, surgical operation, to be followed
by the democratic reconstruction of Afghanistan.

A
short two years later, George W. Bush decided that regime change needed
to happen in Iraq as well. Several hundred thousand casualties and
trillions of dollars later, Mr. Bush’s ally Tony Blair admitted that the
ham-fisted way the invasion of Iraq had taken place contributed
directly to the creation of Islamic State and the brutal chaos in
northern Iraq and eastern Syria. Afghanistan remains deeply unstable.

The invasion of Iraq -- which was supposed to be a demonstration of Shock and Awe -- created ISIS. We would be foolish to repeat Bush's mistake. Rae writes:

We are indeed in a war, because of the
violent and extremist ideologies and techniques of jihadi extremism and
their incompatibility with any kind of world order. A statelet that
enslaves, oppresses, kills and tortures is an affront not just to “the
West,” but to every conceivable standard of decency and the rule of
international law.

But it is not a war
like others in our past, and it will require imagination, solidarity,
courage and extraordinary resilience for us to succeed. We need to learn
from our mistakes. The urge to strike back is human and entirely
understandable. But it has to be matched by a full range of non-military
responses that thus far we have not been capable of in any systematic
way.

This is the opportunity for Canada
– we have been engaged in this struggle for the past 15 years, and have
learned much. Our soldiers are wise, as are our aid officers and
diplomats. We have to share these experiences with others as we wrestle
with the choices ahead.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

After Friday's events in Paris, there have been loud and sustained calls for vengeance. While the impulse is understandable, Robin Sears writes, we must not let terrorists turn us into beasts. Sears cites Charles Taylor, the Canadian philosopher with a world-wide reputation:

Canada’s priceless contribution to the world’s
understanding of the essential role of tolerance or mutual
accommodation in every successful community is the philosopher Charles
Taylor. Taylor puts his case starkly. None of us, he cautions, is
capable of resisting the seduction of prejudice, exclusion, or even
collective punishment if we are sufficiently terrified by propaganda
about “the other.”

Equally, each of us is willing to walk the
path of inclusion, tolerance and openness to religious, ethnic and
racial diversity with sufficient reassurance about its wisdom and
safety. He cites France’s painful passage from being one of the world’s
most inclusive societies post-revolution, to its more shameful treatment
of its Muslim citizens since they landed on its shores post-Algerian
war.

The roots of what happened in Paris go back along way -- just as the causes of the cauldron in the Middle East go back at least a century. And so, Sears writes, Canada stands at a crossroads:

So Canada and the world stand once again at
this crossroad — do we build walls or bridges? Do we cede victory to
these sub-humans who revel in their ability to shed massive amounts of
human blood purely to instill terror — and refuse sanctuary to their
fleeing victims? Or do we teach our children well, about the dead end
that such cowardice necessarily delivers?

Do we again commit the sin of rejecting
refugee ships like the St. Louis in Halifax or the Komagata Maru in
Vancouver. Will a future Pier 21 curator mount a photo of a dead Syrian
family, next to the courageous but rejected Polish family?

Because there is another lesson from Paris, and all the horrors like it, that we will no doubt yet have to endure.

Monday, November 16, 2015

It didn't take long for Justin Trudeau to be tested. On Friday night, the gauntlet was on the ground -- thrown, not by Canadians, but by terrorists in the streets of Paris. Michael Harris writes:

For Justin Trudeau, mass murder in Paris is his trial by ordeal as prime
minister. It didn’t take very long. At the end of the month, Paris was
supposed to be the glittering venue where a new, young prime minister,
and an impressive delegation, would announce to the world that the old
Canada is back. No more fossil awards, no more climate change denial on
behalf of oil companies or the Koch Brothers, no more corporate-driven
“facts” on the environment, no more beating the war drums. Canada was
not shaking its finger at the world anymore, but offering an embrace.

But that's the kind of world we live in -- a world where someone else's mistakes come back to bite you. Now the French, unsurprisingly, have vowed to conduct a "pitiless war." But Andrew Bacevich, writing in the Boston Globe, reminds us where pitiless war in the Middle East has gotten us:

“It’s not as if the outside world hasn’t already given pitiless war a
try. The Soviet Union spent all of the 1980s attempting to pacify
Afghanistan and succeeded only in killing a million or so Afghans while
creating an incubator for Islamic radicalism. Beginning in 2003, the
United States attempted something similar in Iraq and ended up producing
similarly destabilizing results. By the time the US troops withdrew in
2011, something like 200,000 Iraqis had died, most of them civilians.
Today Iraq teeters on the brink of disintegration.”

There will be all kinds of pressure on Trudeau to join the continuing March of Folly. He's young. But let's hope he's no fool.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

It's been surreal to watch and listen to Stephen Harper's former cabinet ministers distance themselves from their boss. Bob Hepburn writes:

Let’s start with Rona Ambrose, the new interim party leader.
Without a hint of insincerity, Ambrose insists her caucus will no
longer engage in the “nastiness” of the old Harper government and will
be more “constructive, effective” in working as the Official Opposition.

Also, Ambrose has completely reversed herself
on the need for a public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal
women. For years, the Tories refused to hold an inquiry into what the
RCMP says are more than 1,200 cases of missing and murdered indigenous
women and girls.

Now she is all in favour of an inquiry, saying it “is an absolutely non-partisan issue, it should never be political.”

And then there's Tony Clement, who deep sixed the long form census:

Next is Tony Clement, the former industry
minister who cancelled the long-form census of 2011, a move widely
denounced inside and outside of government. Clement was relentless in
implementing the change, insisting it was needed to protect citizen
privacy.

Now Clement is expressing regrets, saying in hindsight that “I would have done it differently.”

And, of course, there's Kellie Leitch, who -- academically at least -- is supposed to be very bright:

Then there’s Kellie Leitch, the former labour
minister at the centre of one of the lowest points in the Tory campaign.
She hit that point when she joined cabinet colleague Chris Alexander in
announcing “a snitch hotline” to report “barbaric cultural practices.” In reality, Leitch was urging Canadians to target Muslims in their neighbourhoods.

Now Leitch, who apparently dreams of succeeding Harper, says the plan was misunderstood and not communicated very well.

Hepburn writes that the Conservatives must really think voters are stupid. Given the results of the election, and their own pronouncements, it's pretty clear that stupidity is closer to home than the former Harperites realize.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

When facts caught up with Stephen Harper's claim that he was the best person to manage the economy, he tried to stoke the fires of xenophobia, convinced that the heat he generated would lead him all the way back to Sussex Drive. He failed. But, Errol Mendes writes, we should look carefully at the numbers:

Yet, drilling down into the election results, the Conservative strategy
partly succeeded at least in Quebec in parts where there was a dominant
francophone population. In these ridings, where there are not many and
in some cases, not any, Muslims or people from other cultures, the
Conservative campaign played into what are often the catalysts of
incipient racism and xenophobia, namely fear of loss of identity and
suspicion of the “different other”. The French policy of secularism
imported into francophone Quebec also played a part.

Canadians, as a whole, are decent people. However, some decent people are easily manipulated:

But irresponsible political leaders attempted to drive a large hole into
that precious quality of respect for diversity that Canada gives to
the world. The campaign of Stephen Harper partially succeeded in that.
It massively rebounded on him and his party due the fact that it wounded
the NDP and its leader who courageously stuck to his principles and
stood by the fundamental right of the solitary women to wear her niqab
at the citizenship ceremony as long she had shown her identity without
the face covering beforehand. The demise of the NDP in Quebec due to
the xenophobic strategy of the Conservatives led the majority of
progressive voters to swing massively to the Liberals as the main hope
of ousting the Harper government. The majority Liberal government will
no doubt bury the barely disguised xenophobic proposals and actions of
the Harper government. However, what limited success those proposals and
actions had in Quebec is deeply troubling not only for Canada, but I
suggest for many parts of our troubled world. There are growing number
of examples in Europe of similar attempts by usually far right
politicians to use various forms of xenophobia to make inroads into main
stream and sometimes even traditionally progressive parties.

The same kind of race baiting is alive and well in European politics. And, after yesterday's events in Paris, it's bound to raise its ugly head again. Language and symbols -- like niqabs -- can inflame a population:

Language and symbols as much as guns and bullets can cause great damage
to any society and pose the greatest dangers to those in democratic
societies whose very guarantees of freedom of expression can be used by
those who may want to gain power by scapegoating and vilifying the
minorities who are part of their increasingly diverse societies.

That is why what happened in Canada a month ago is so important. Like it or not, we are an example -- either good or bad -- for the world. And, for the moment, we have listened to our better angels.

Friday, November 13, 2015

In 2011, Stephen Harper garnered the editorial support of 95% of Canada's newspapers. This time around, that number had dropped to 71%. A good portion of that 71% came from the Postmedia chain, whose chairman -- Paul Godfrey -- told his editors that he would brook no dissent from the chain's support of Harper. Michael Harris writes:

Godfrey committed what the late senator and Globe and Mail
editor Richard Doyle said was the unpardonable sin of the industry: he
held up the newspapers he runs and got a reflection of himself. And
remember how this was done. On the weekend before the election, Godfrey
disfigured the front pages of all his newspapers with a full-page attack ad in support of the Harper Conservatives.

From the Ottawa Citizen to the Vancouver Sun, the same
fear-mongering ad advised readers that voting Liberal or NDP “will cost
you.” Godfrey tried to impose the PM’s plan for re-election, the magic
mantra of fear and forgetfulness, on the Postmedia audience. And just to
be sure to catch the eyes of the dullards, that front-page wrap was
bright yellow. A good choice of colour, given what Godfrey was up to.

The problem is that those who support the chain's editorial position are a distinct minority. And Godfrey's first job is to sell newspapers:

Godfrey’s forced march of Postmedia editors through the swamps of political partisanship could cost the chain dearly. The National Post
is already floundering under a $650 million debtload, kept afloat by
U.S. hedge funds that extract big interest returns on their
“investment.” No one is happy about that and many others in this
besieged industry are taking on water.

In the meantime, Godfrey is totally out of touch with the people who hold
the chain’s fate in their hands — his dwindling band of subscribers.
According to a new report from the Canadian Media Concentration Research
Project, Canada’s newspapers were, as the Huffington Post put it, “in the tank” for Harper for the past two elections.

Canada's newspapers are in trouble. That's because they have forgotten who their audience is.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Justin Trudeau has made a lot of promises. And, Susan Delacourt writes, he's calling on Canadians to help him keep them. That's a complete turnaround from the man he replaced:

The difference boils down to this: Stephen Harper only made promises
that he had the power to deliver on his own. Trudeau, on the other hand,
needs help from people and institutions outside his government to make
good on his campaign pledges — help from premiers, from other countries
and, perhaps most importantly, from Canadian citizens themselves.

Consider Trudeau's promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada before years end:

Citizenship and Immigration Minister John McCallum has made no secret
of the fact that Liberals can’t pull this off by themselves. Getting
the Syrian refugees here is something the government can organize,
McCallum has said, but making the necessary settlement arrangements
requires Canadians to suit up for service too — by providing homes or
other aid to newcomers in their communities.

“There are many Canadians across the land who want to reach out to help us in this endeavour,” McCallum said this week.

Let’s be clear — that’s more than just a platitude. It’s a condition for making this promise a reality by Dec. 31.

And, then, there's Trudeau's promise to tackle climate change:

What this means, in essence, is that Canada’s prime minister will not be
sitting alone at the table in Paris — and any commitments from Canada
at these talks won’t be the product of a simple declaration from on
high. As the Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor observed on CBC
Radio’s Ottawa Morning this week, it means that Canada’s future plans on
climate change will be hammered out in Paris hotel rooms as well as at
the big UN negotiating table. Trudeau’s going to Paris to negotiate with
the world — but while he’s there, he’ll also have to negotiate with the
Canadian delegation he’s bringing with him.

Trudeau's approach to governing is risky. When other people have skin in the game, they don't always do as you would wish them to do. But it's a refreshing change from the last guy. And it could change our politics:

This attitude speaks to an idea of government very different from the
one held by the last government — that the responsibility for making
things work in government belongs to citizens as well as politicians. In
this version of government, citizens aren’t merely passive “taxpayers” —
they’re participants.

Mullin, now the vice-president of community
relations for the TD Bank, determined which of the so-called Vietnamese
“boat people” came to Canada and which were denied passage, relying
largely on gut impressions which resulted in far more “yays” than
“nays.”

As a banker, Mullin is concerned about making good investments. But he knows that, besides investing in things, you have to invest in people. In 1979, he told Mansbridge:

"We have to look upon this for ourselves as an investment in the
future,’’ the young Mullin told Mansbridge 36 years ago. “The first six
months we might have a lot of problems, but what’s this guy’s son going
to be like and how’s he going to do? I think that’s the important thing
you have to look at.’’

Just
as in 1979, today’s Canada’s immigration officers must be given the
latitude needed to their jobs, he says, and they would be looking at the
potential of the family unit, not necessarily the parents, but the
14-year-old girl who learned to speak English while in a refugee camp.

“You look at it as a generational investment,’’ he says. “It’s not mom and dad. It’s the kids.’
As he looks back, he knows the first generation of Vietnamese Canadians he admitted did reasonably well.

“The next generation did extremely well.’’

Today we remember our soldiers who have died in four wars. But we should also remember those who have fled wars to live among us -- and whose coming has enriched this country.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

During the last election, Stephen Harper trumpeted the record number of trade deals he had signed. But, Gus Van Harten argues, if you look at the deals, it's clear that Mr. Harper has been selling us down the river:

The right trade agreements can create opportunities for Canada. But the
Harper government has seemed more interested in getting lots of deals
than in making sure each is good for Canada’s economy.

The three most important deals are:the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with
China, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with
Europe, and the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

We have not been given a lot of information about the deals until now. The TPP has people like Jim Basillie very worried -- with reason. It continues a pattern established with FIPA:

1. The Harper government gave Chinese investors “market access” to
Canada — a right to buy what they want in our economy — without getting
the same for Canadian investors in China.

2. When Harper announced the deal he said that it “ensures
non-discriminatory treatment” for foreign investors. But the terms let
China keep all its existing laws, policies, or practices that
discriminate against Canadian investors.

3. In FIPA, the Harper government exposed Canada to potentially massive
financial liabilities due to the special and lopsided rights it gives to
foreign companies, which can seek uncapped amounts of public
compensation from governments directly before international tribunals.

One of the reasons Mr. Harper lost the election was because his claim that he was a good economic manager was no longer credible. Careful examination of his trade pacts underscores his economic illiteracy.

We'll have to see if the Liberals are better at trade than Mr. Harper was.

Monday, November 09, 2015

Justin Trudeau has vowed to spend $51.1 billion on infrastructure over the next ten years. Allan Freeman writes that, before a penny is spent, some pretty serious strategic thinking needs to be done. Such thinking was not a hallmark of the last government:

Back in 2009, when the global financial crisis provoked a rapid drop
in economic activity, infrastructure spending was a big component of the
Conservative government’s Economic Action Plan. The theme at the time,
repeated ad nauseam by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, was “shovels in
the ground.” The idea was to get work going as quickly as possible on
infrastructure projects to provide much-needed economic stimulus.
Projects, he kept on saying, were to be “timely, targeted and
temporary.”

Another phrase Flaherty repeated a lot in 2009 was “use it or lose
it.” Provinces and municipalities were warned that if they didn’t get
the excavators digging and the concrete pouring by March 31, 2011, the
promised cash would be clawed back by Ottawa. Of course, it didn’t quite
work out that way.

What it boiled down to was pork:

The Harper Tories discovered that Keynesian economics and big deficits
provided fabulous opportunities for local infrastructure projects —
otherwise known as “pork”. In total, 7,000 provincial, territorial and
municipal infrastructure projects were greenlighted under the Economic
Action Plan, leading to the construction of hockey rinks, day-care
centres and small-craft harbours. They were great projects for
politicians looking to pose for local media at ribbon-cuttings — but
they had little or no strategic impact on the economy.

Like everything the Harperites did, it added up to vote buying. What we need, writes Freeman is strategic investment in the economy:

If infrastructure investment is supposed to bring transformational
change this time around, the new government should think long and hard
about the impact of projects — and make choices. Instead of shelling out
$20 million each on five regional centres to study climate change — a
typical Canadian response that would respond to the requirements of
politics — why not concentrate efforts on one national centre and spend
the $100 million in one place, where it can have significant impact?

Let’s think strategically, even if that means concentrating funding
on projects that necessarily will be geographically limited, like
high-speed rail in the Toronto-Montreal corridor. Even if it means some
ridings will get less cash, and backbenchers will enjoy fewer
opportunities to hand over enormous novelty cheques.

Sunday, November 08, 2015

Justin Trudeau will be tested on many fronts. One of the most important fronts is international trade -- where the TPP has just landed in his lap. Tom Walkom writes:

Released Thursday, the final text confirms most critics’ fears.

Certain kinds of new-generation prescription
pharmaceuticals will receive enhanced patent protection. That means they
will become more expensive — both for individuals and provincial drug
plans.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a bad deal for medicine,” said the aid group Doctors Without Borders.

Governments will find it harder to protect the
privacy of Canadian citizens. If, for instance, a Canadian credit card
company wants to store electronic information in cheaper data banks
abroad, governments will be able to intervene only if they can prove a
“legitimate policy objective.”

The dispute settlement system that already
allows American and Mexican companies to challenge Canadian
environmental and other laws before special trade arbitrators has been
expanded to include all nations in the TPP.

The new pact will deviate from the existing
North American Free Trade Agreement in that hearings held under this
system will now be open to the public — unless the arbitrators decide
otherwise.

Oh yes. And the threshold for reviewing
foreign takeovers of Canadian companies has been raised from $600
million to $1.5 billion.

But the most immediate casualty of the new deal is the Canadian auto industry.
Under NAFTA, only auto parts containing 60 per cent North American
content could move duty-free between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Earlier this fall, the Harper government
admitted that the TPP would reduce this local content threshold to 40
per cent. The final text shows that for some crucial auto parts, the new
threshold is even lower — 35 per cent.

What this means in practice is that auto
makers operating within the TPP will be able to obtain up to 65 per cent
of their parts outside the trade bloc — from cheap-labour countries
like Thailand.

Clearly, the TPP is meant to enshrine neo-liberalism's global juggernaut. Put bluntly, it threatens the kind of democracy Trudeau has been preaching.

It will not be easy to renegotiate the pact. It will not be easy to walk away from it. But it would be foolish to reject either option.

Saturday, November 07, 2015

The Harperites don't seem to understand why they lost the election. "We got the big things right," Jason Kenny says. "We got the tone wrong." Andrew Coyne disagrees. The Harperites lost because they got the big things wrong. They were always about power, not principle:

With each about-face, broken promise or abandoned principle, from
corporate subsidies to foreign investment to deficit spending, from the
rights of MPs to the discussability of abortion to Quebec’s nationhood,
it became harder and harder to understand just what principle or
philosophy was guiding Conservative policy — other than blind obedience
to the leader.

At their very core, they knew their was no philosophy -- no set of principles -- which guided their decisions. That is why they ultimately lacked confidence. And that lack of confidence had disastrous consequences:

And from this void grew the darkness. People are inclined to be generous
to others when they feel confident in themselves; they will be open
about their plans when they believe in their purpose — and trust that
others can be brought round to them as well. Not only is it not enough
to change the tone, then. It’s not even the point. What has to change
first is the Tory psyche. They have to believe in themselves, which is
to say they have to believe in something.

In the end, they were in power to serve the ego of one man. Michael Harris has it right. They were a Party of One. That is why they lost the election.

Friday, November 06, 2015

It's not easy to carry the high expectations of a nation on your shoulders. Just ask Barack Obama. That is the task facing Justin Trudeau. He's made a lot of promises -- and it will take time to implement them. Take the Inquiry Into Murdered Indigenous Women. Michael Harris writes:

The new minister for Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Carolyn
Bennett, has already felt the pressure to call a public inquiry into
1,200 missing and murdered native women that Stephen Harper refused to
call. In the first scrum of the new cabinet, Bennett had to point out
that you just don’t just ‘announce’ inquiries.

There is a great deal of groundwork that must be done, including
soliciting input from indigenous groups and other departments of
government. How much should be budgeted? How long should hearings take?
How broad should the scope of the inquiry be? When will Parliament get
its report? Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould obviously will be a
key player in helping define those parameters. The right commissioners
also will have to be found.

And, then there's the problem of crafting policy to deal with climate change:

Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna will be
going to the Paris climate meetings, along with the prime minister,
other federal party leaders and any premiers not tied up in elections.
The idea behind this grand delegation is to announce to the world we are
no longer the country that walked away from Kyoto and failed for ten
years to regulate our energy industry.

That’s all to the good; Canadians don’t want to add to the national
collection of Fossil Awards earned by Harper’s environment ministers.
Neither do they want Canada to agree to climate change goals too
ambitious to be realized — or too puny to be meaningful. McKenna will be
heading into whitewater just weeks into her job — and the redoubtable
Elizabeth May will be there to mark the government’s report card.

And there is the problem of restoring services for Canada's veterans:

Now it will be up to Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr — who knows a
thing or two about the reality many of these veterans face — to make
good on Trudeau’s promise to re-open those nine Veterans Affairs centers
shuttered in a venal attempt to “balance” the budget.

The VAC centers looked after urgent needs, and it will be a matter of
urgency to re-open them. And will the Liberals proceed with or drop the
court case in British Columbia pitting Ottawa against military veterans
who believe they are owed a duty of care that transcends the niggardly
terms of the New Veterans Charter?

There is much to be done. And it will take time -- probably too much time. But, if Trudeau keeps his pledge to lead an open government, I suspect most Canadians will give him that time.

Thursday, November 05, 2015

I like to read Andrew Cohen's column when I'm looking for perspective. Perhaps that's because, like me, Cohen -- who teaches journalism and international affairs at Carleton -- is an ex- Montrealer. He remembers what Quebec used to be and he understands what it has become. More importantly, he understands the complexity of this country. On Tuesday, he wrote:

At 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Justin Trudeau and his new ministry arrive at
Rideau Hall. They swear allegiance, they stand before the cameras, they
look fresh and different.

It is a change of government, a
transfer of power, bloodless and seamless. Canada has been doing this
without fuss for 148 years. While Germany had Reichs and France had
Republics, we have always accepted without challenge the election of new
leaders, regardless of party, period or policy.

It is cliché on
this occasion to stand up and salute democracy. But as John F. Kennedy
put it at his inauguration, a new government is less a victory of party
than a celebration of freedom.

Cohen then wrote about the fortnight between the election and yesterday:

This autumn fortnight is soothing because we are still digesting what happened on Oct. 19. Few thought it possible.

We
took a party that was moribund four years ago, with the fewest seats in
its history, and made it the government, with the second-highest number
of seats in its history, the most since 1949.
We returned the
country to the two-party system of mainstream parties, with the New
Democrats back in third place. Behold, the status quo ante.

We
elected the second-youngest prime minister in our history and the first
son of a prime minister. Margaret Trudeau has the unique distinction of
being both wife and mother of a prime minister.

We chose a
government with more women and more aboriginals. It has seats in every
province and almost every big city. It is rural and urban, black, white
and tan, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and other faiths. Canadians
see their reflection in their Parliament.

We turned out to vote, almost seven in 10. On some reserves, they ran out of ballots.

There will be tough times ahead and the new government will have to get up to speed quickly. But yesterday should remind us that we can be guided by our better angels. We have much to celebrate and much for which to be grateful.

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Some pundits on the Right -- like Andrew Coyne and John Ivison -- have suggested that Justin Trudeau's promise of a cabinet based on gender parity is a mistake. But there is more to doing a good job than just competence. Life experience, Tim Harper suggests, is critical. And Trudeau's caucus contains an abundance of both:

As it is, the first Trudeau cabinet
is likely to include a former general, an author and journalist, a city
councillor who was a wrongly accused political prisoner in his native
India, a doctor who spent years training physicians in underdeveloped
Africa, an engineer and former astronaut, a former mayor and a
specialist in aboriginal business and leadership, and an Oxford law
graduate named as Quebec’s “up and coming” woman of the year seven years
ago.

There are likely to be three former ministers,
at least two aboriginals, a successful businessman, a former negotiator
for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in East Timor and a
quadriplegic who overcame a tragic drive-by shooting to become an
Alberta cabinet minister.

People may have forgotten that, when Attawapaskat was in crisis, Stephen Harper sent in an accountant to fix the problem. It was typical for a man whose frame of reference is very narrow and whose life experience is extremely shallow.

And consider the backgrounds of several of the women who may be in Trudeau's cabinet:

Carolyn Bennett, a doctor, is a former junior minister in the Paul Martin government.

South African-born Joyce Murray is a former
British Columbia environment minister, founder of a successful
reforestation company in her home province and a federal leadership
candidate.

Kirsty Duncan, from Etobicoke North, is a
medical geographer who served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change that won the 2007 Nobel Prize.

On the East Coast, Yvonne Jones is young (47),
has served in the Newfoundland and Labrador cabinet, was the provincial
Liberal leader, and took out Conservative cabinet minister Peter
Penashue in a 2013 byelection.

Judy Foote served 11 years and held four portfolios in the Newfoundland cabinet. Both women are tough, as well, both having fought breast cancer.

In Manitoba, MaryAnn Mihychuk is a
geoscientist who held two portfolios in the NDP government of Gary Doer
and was a trailblazer in the mining industry.

Newly elected Whitby MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes
reclaimed Jim Flaherty’s old seat. She was born in Grenada, was a
volunteer at the Congress of Black Women of Canada, on the Ethics Board
and Governing Council of the University of Toronto and entrepreneur of
the year.

Maryam Monsef from Peterborough-Kawartha fled
with her family from the Taliban in Afghanistan, is the first
Afghan-born MP in Canadian history and co-founded a campaign that has
raised over $150,000 for women and girls in Afghanistan. Anita
Vandenbeld from the Ottawa-area has served in 20 countries for the
United Nations development program and was a Canadian Peacekeeping
Service Medal, her neighbour, Karen McCrimmon, is the first woman to
command a Canadian Air Forces flying squadron, and Carla Qualtrough of
Delta, B.C., is the former legal counsel for both the British Columbia
and Canadian Human Rights Commissions — and, oh yeah, she was born
visually impaired and won three medal at the Paralympics.

There are all kinds of possibilities when you're not running a one man show.

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Canada has six distinct regions. And each region has its own distinct economy. Any prime minister has to balance regional interests and pay attention to each regional economy. Justin Trudeau will have to remember that reality if he is to govern wisely. Donald Sovoie writes:

Canada does not have an effective upper house in Parliament to give
voice to regional perspectives. It is no exaggeration to say our Senate
has been a dismal failure in what ought to be its most important role –
speaking for the regions. All policy issues, all the premiers and all
MPs go to the prime minister for answers. There is nowhere else to go.
Even once powerful regional ministers have become a relic of Canadian
history.

Our national political institutions have
little capacity to give life to regional perspectives, so he will have
to invent an in-house capacity. The point is that national policies can
never work in all regions unless they are put through regional lenses.

That's why regional interests must be strongly represented in Trudeau's cabinet. And the new prime minister's capacity to listen -- something Stephen Harper didn't do very well -- will be tested:

A
case in point is Mr. Trudeau’s commitment to invest some $125-billion
in infrastructure over the next decade. There is a need for such
investments, particularly in mass transit in the largest cities, notably
Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Atlantic Canada, too, needs
investment, but of a different kind; we do not lack for roads and
bridges, and Atlantic Canadians rarely have to deal with long commuting
times.

Infrastructure spending holds a great deal of appeal. It provides
tangible evidence that the federal government is active in the region
(not to mention many photo opportunities for politicians). However, what
Atlantic Canada needs for economic development is vastly different from
what Southern Ontario requires.

And, just as the West wanted in thirty years ago, Atlantic Canada now wants a seat at the table. Maritimers felt as alienated from the Harper government as Westerners felt from Pierre Trudeau's government.

Justin Trudeau learned much at his father's knee. One hopes he has also learned from his father's mistakes.

Monday, November 02, 2015

The Duffy Trial recommences on November 18th. It offers all kinds of lessons to Justin Trudeau and his incoming government. Michael Harris writes:

This is a story I have watched, with minor variations, unfold countless
times. Whether it’s Arthur Anderson’s accountants lying for Enron, the
CBC downplaying the ethical and criminal lapses of its “stars” until
that became impossible, or Penn State turning a blind eye to football
coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual predation — it always ends badly.

Those who work within an organization -- most of the time -- have a reflexive response to protect the organization. But, of course, the basic rules is that a good organization hires good people, not just those who will protect the leader of the organization.

Michael Higgins, the former President of St. Thomas University, has written extensively about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He has applied the lessons he learned to the Government of Canada:

“When you undertake to ‘protect’ the reputation of an institution – in
this case the Red Chamber – when you seek to insulate any governing body
– in this case the PMO and the Prime Minister – from the taint of
scandal, and you do this through spin, sophistical argumentation, and
lawyerly legerdemain, any gains are provisional, any result pyrrhic.”

Harris adds this codicil:

The lesson from the Wright/Duffy Affair for prime minister designate
Justin Trudeau and the PMO he will create around him is clear. Canadians
were falsely promised transparency and accountability in 2006 and all
too often got self-interest and lies from the highest office in the
land. The mendacity reached its crescendo with the Senate expense
scandal.

With all his great promise, and with every good wish for success
coming Trudeau’s way from the voters who just elected him, Canadians now
expect a much higher standard than the one offered by Wright’s notion
of loyalty in Harper’s PMO.

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.